Business & Economics
Bitcoin Breaks Below $90K, Wiping $1T From Crypto in Six Weeks
On 18 Nov 2025 Bitcoin slid under the USD 90,000 mark for the first time since April, capping a 30 % retreat from its late-October record and erasing the year’s gains while dragging the wider crypto market into a $1 trillion drawdown.
Focusing Facts
- BTC hit an intraday low of $89,180 on 18 Nov 2025, down from the 30 Oct 2025 peak around $126,000.
- CoinGecko estimates the total crypto market capitalisation has fallen by more than $1 trillion in the 40 days since early October.
- The Crypto Fear & Greed Index printed 15 on 18 Nov 2025, its lowest reading since January 2025.
Context
Sharp, late-cycle reversals after euphoric highs echo Bitcoin’s January 2018 collapse (from $19k to $6k in five weeks) and the Nasdaq’s dot-com bust in April 2000, when trillions evaporated almost overnight. Today’s drawdown underscores two long-running forces: 1) Bitcoin’s increasing correlation with liquidity-sensitive tech assets—rate expectations and ETF flows now move crypto as surely as halvings once did; 2) the market’s structural maturation—spot ETFs, corporate treasuries and sovereign buyers like El Salvador cushion the sell-off even as leverage unwinds. Whether November 2025 marks a mere cyclical chill or the onset of a multiyear ‘crypto winter’ matters less on a century scale than Bitcoin’s steady migration from fringe experiment (2009) to mainstream macro asset. Each violent shakeout redistributes coins from momentum speculators to long-horizon holders; if that pattern persists, the current panic may read as another 2025 footnote in a 100-year monetisation arc—unless, of course, rising opportunity costs and regulatory clamps finally arrest the narrative of digital scarcity.
Perspectives
Pro-Bitcoin industry voices
Cointelegraph, BeInCrypto, Cryptopolitan — They frame the pull-back as a routine, even healthy reset that historically precedes new highs, stressing long-term adoption tailwinds and predicting a rebound or year-end rally. Because these outlets cater to a crypto-enthusiast readership and depend on optimistic sentiment for traffic, they may play down structural risks and accentuate bullish talking points drawn from selective on-chain or macro data.
Cautious mainstream finance & tech media
24/7 Wall St., Tech Startups, Euro Weekly News — They interpret the slide as evidence that Bitcoin is entering a full-fledged bear market tied to broader risk-off mood, tech-bubble fears and waning institutional appetite, warning prices could tumble toward much lower support zones. With audiences less wedded to crypto, these outlets tend to spotlight dramatic losses and bubble analogies, which can amplify fear and draw clicks even when longer-term fundamentals receive less attention.
Technical-analysis driven crypto publications
Bitcoin Magazine, AMBCrypto — Their chart-centric commentary argues that broken support and bearish indicators point to an unfolding ‘crypto winter,’ with any bounce likely short-lived until much lower levels are tested. Heavy reliance on historical price patterns can lead them to over-extrapolate from past cycles and under-weight new catalysts, skewing coverage toward deterministic bearish scenarios to showcase analytical rigor.